"Sero."

Out in the distance, a streak of light the color of the open, noon sky blazes across the horizon. Its cyan glow penetrates the cloud layer from below as it appears to hop around with astounding speed. You watch in awe as the bright smudge, barely the size of a housefly in the distance, crosses behind a distant Titan Tree instantly. It flashes around like a lost sprite, crossing distances within seconds that you had crossed in hours.

"Nova, honor our agreement," Tyrr'olni'nel'mul says, breaking your stupor, "We must catch him."

You nod.

You take a leap of faith, throwing yourself off the edge of the branch and out into the expanse. The wind rushes through your hair as you fall through the air, and the looming wood of the branch rises behind you.

You reach inside yourself for the burning power within, activating your Token and transforming into light.

With a flash of effervescent, golden luminescence, your body blurs, speeding up to ridiculous speeds. The clouds rush below you, almost too fast to see as you pass above them in your golden form.

In the distance, you spot the cyan glow jumping around beneath the cloud layer, the ridiculous speed of his movement no longer relatively as fast to you.

You suddenly dip downwards, hurtling towards the creamy layer of clouds so far below. You slam into the clouds, breaking through them like a loose net of branches in the way of your swiftness. The cloud layer breaks and you emerge into the underworld. The gargantuan roots of the Titan Trees arcing and twisting together in their majestic dance of wood, mold, and life.

In the distance, glowing like an azure sun, is a figure, miniature at this distance, racing along the roots, somehow.

You fly just below the cloud layer, casting your golden radiance upon its surface. You soar with as much speed as you can muster, straining to catch up to the glowing figure so far away.

You begin gaining on him. Every second, you draw closer to him.

Eventually, you get close enough to make out some details of the person you are chasing. Sero is wearing his previous clothing, with their alien colors and strange, maybe even impractical composition. A blood-red vest over skin-tight, white bandages that cover his arms to his wrists. He wears baggy, beige trousers that are clamped to his ankles by bands made of the same shiny material that you remember on his left thumb. His spiky black hair that you remember is now replaced by similarly spiky cyan-blue hair, the same color as his strange, burning bubble.

Sero is running. Somehow, he is running at mind-numbing speeds, sky-blue light emanating from his body like the sun, the light creating a large teardrop shape with him in the middle. The front of which burns with illuminating fire. As he runs, cyan-blue afterimages appear behind him. Telegraphing his astounding movements before fading into the overcast underworld light. Sero's body seems to jitter, his movements mimicking the movements of normal running, except at blazing speed.

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Sero suddenly turns his head around to look over his shoulder, his expression changes from a determined grin to a surprised, possibly scared look. He turns his head back and seems to redouble his efforts, the light coming from his body, and his hair, suddenly shifting color to a pale, luminescent white. He speeds up and begins to gain ground on you, rather quickly.

He was outrunning you. You would not stand for that.

You similarly redouble your efforts, pushing yourself faster and faster. Your golden form glows even more brightly as you do so.

Sero appears to notice, for he jumps, higher than what you would think is possible. He twists in the air, clapping his hands together in front of him as if he was diving into a pool of water. Over the rushing wind, you hear him yell, "Max Pulse!"

A beam of pure white light suddenly shoots out of his outstretched hands. It flashes past you as you instinctively dodge out of the way just in time. The beam explodes in the air behind you, rocking the root system below you.

Sero lands on the root below, his bare feet sliding a much shorter distance than what you expected on the wood with no visible damage. You hit the root and deactivate your Token.

Sero stands up a little ways away, "Nova? Oh, it is you! Sick!"

You stand up from your crouch as well, a little dizzy for some reason. "I'm not sick. I know a healer, and I bet she would be happy to heal whoever is sick." You respond when the bout of dizziness disappears.

Sero narrows his strange, alien eyes incredulously, his characteristic grin still on his face. "No, no, it's a figure of speech, slang or something, I don't know. Anyways, I didn't know you could do that! That is really cool!" He walks forward, "Sorry for attacking you back there, I didn't know it was you!"

You walk towards him as well, "You said something back there, what was it?"

"Oh, Max Pulse?"

"Yeah, that. What and why?"

"It's one of my Pulses!" he explains matter-of-factly, like you were supposed to know what that meant.

You just look at him quizzically.

"Oh, right, right, right. I forgot that you have never been off-world before."

"What--?"

He cuts you off and continues on as if it was a perfectly normal thing to say.

"This," he waves his hand, the mysterious, glowing white ring on his vested chest suddenly moves to his shoulder and then onto his arm, floating with his arm inside the strange circle, "Is what is called The Rhodos. It's an artifact that I picked up a very long time ago." Sero's eyes suddenly become distant, as if he was recalling a long-forgotten memory, only for him to shake himself awake once again.

The Rhodos, as he called it, is a glowing ring of solid white light about the size of a dinner plate. Along its edge are five, evenly spaced, similarly glowing triangles that float away from the ring itself. Inside the outer ring is a smaller ring that floats an inch or so from it, the smaller ring is connected to the outer one by an interwoven, almost braided lace of hair-like strings that make up a nearly invisible, twisting network. The inner ring has its own five triangles, only this time they are pointing inward instead of outward. The rings themselves float a few inches from Sero's raised finger, they seem to spin opposite of one another lethargically.

"The Rhodos is a gateway to a reservoir of Allegory that I can call upon at will to do pretty much whatever I want!" The rings then retreat back onto the man's chest, still spinning sleepily.

This new and weird information hurt your head already, but Sero wasn't finished.

"My Pulses, Buster Pulse and Max Pulse, are a result of me opening a small hole into the reservoir and pushing the magic through as an energy pulse!" Sero explains excitedly. He seems so energized by the act of explaining his abilities to you, but you just don't get it.

"That's cool, I guess..."

"Anyway, now that I have found you, I want to show you something!"